Wild One
by SuavePanda
Summary: Piper gets tattoos and Jason tries to figure out what he's thinking.


It's a tiny star, outlined but not filled in, on the inside of her wrist. _For the war_, she says; _for those we lost. For what we won._

And Jason remembers the heat and rush of battle, screams and clashes and the _poundpoundpound_ of his heart, and he traces the shape of it with his thumb and nods his head and kisses her, bittersweet.

* * *

The second one is different.

She doesn't tell him about it; he finds it, early in the morning when they're swimming in the lake. She raises her arms for a dive off the canoe and there it is, high on the left side of her ribs: a birdcage, empty with its door locked. Jason stares at it on her skin in the moment before she dives, at its lines, darker than the star, at the way the cold air raises goose bumps over the ink.

He doesn't say anything, and neither does Piper.

(When they row back to shore he borrows Annabeth's laptop to search birdcage tattoos. _Door open_, he reads. _Freedom. Door closed_, it says. _Trapped_.)

* * *

He means to ask her about it, about them, ask why she wanted tattoos and what they mean—really mean—to her. Why Piper stained the thoughts onto herself instead of writing them in a diary or braiding them into a worn bracelet. But he never does; he can never seem to bring it up and she never talks about them.

It's all right, he thinks. They're hers and she doesn't have to explain them to me. Live and let live.

And it's good, and it's fine.

* * *

Jason wakes up to Piper tapping his shoulder.

"Wha-?" he says, groggy.

"I'm going to go get a tat," she says.

"What time is it?"

"Should I get a bird or a puzzle piece on my shoulder?"

"Like the bird is out of the birdcage?"

She's silent, and her breathing is quiet. "Yeah, don't you think?"

"Sure. How'd you even get in here?"

"Thanks," she's saying, kissing his cheek and turning toward the door.

Jason mumbles a confused response and nestles into his pillow, eyes slipping shut. He can never keep up with her.

* * *

When he wakes again at a much more acceptable time of day, he doesn't remember it at all until Piper comes back and slips her shirt down her shoulder to show him. "Like it?" she asks, and he smiles and says "I love it" and pulls her down into bed with him.

* * *

People have noticed by now. Piper is the only one at camp with any tattoos besides Jake from Hephaestus, and eyes linger on her ink when she wears short sleeves. It isn't malicious; if anything, there's a bit of envy, of reverence, in the hushed and excited whispers. _"I want one too,"_ he hears; "_But I want hers! It'd be weird to copy."_

He hides his smile in his hand.

* * *

Then Lacey is killed during a skirmish with hydra, nothing major at all, nothing that should have resulted in even the smallest injury, and Piper stays in her cabin for a day and when she comes out she won't speak to anyone beyond simple conversation. And Jason looks at her and sees the storm swimming in her heart and knows what's coming.

Three days after the fight, Leo tries to breach the subject, ease her into it, and Piper explodes. She smothers him into shards with eyes like ice and words that drip cyanide. It's quiet and controlled and there's so much emotion behind it Leo is genuinely terrified. When she speaks, she speaks through him. And Leo shivers.

So Leo stumbles away confused and scared and wounded and then Piper disappears for eleven hours, and everyone but Jason goes insane looking for her because he knows exactly what she's doing.

Which. She comes back with bloody knees and bruised eyes and she won't let anyone give her ambrosia and Jason can feel the new ink pulsing in her skin.

He corners her after dinner and pulls her out to Zeus's Fist, carries her when she drags her feet and refuses, and when he finally gets her there she's a mess and her lashes are thick with tears and he says without preamble, "Show me."

And Piper shrugs out of her jacket and untapes the bandages covering it and holds out her arm, palm up, for him to see the dark red target drawn prettily over the veins in the crease of her elbow.

"Next time they can have me instead," she says, and he hears the waver in her voice she just barely manages to hide as she prods the swollen skin. "I made it easy. Get me right in the center of it."

"Bulls eye," Jason says, and after she's rewrapped her arm he pulls her in for a hug, and her tears are wet on his shoulder.

* * *

For the fifth one, Piper brings Jason with her.

It's March and spring is just beginning to unfurl its wings. Little green leaves peek out from slushy snow and the sun shines weak but determined from behind grey clouds and the rain kisses the earth.

"I want another," she whispers to him on a Saturday. He looks at her, bemused, and she taps her star. "Come with me?"

And her hair is falling in her face and he eyes are smudged with yesterday's mascara and her shirt is rumpled and too bug and his, and Jason says okay.

"I have an idea of what I want, but I'm not sure," she tells him the cab on their way into the city.

"Yeah?" he says, and he doesn't expect a response, but her eyes brighten and she launches into explanation anyway.

"I was thinking a Lego, one of those rectangular ones, or maybe something written in Braille. Or 'c'est la vie' behind my ear. But I kind of want a lock too, a really tiny one on my thumb. Or a barcode."

Jason listens a bit dumbfounded as she explains the meaning behind each of them and wonders when she decided to wear her soul on her skin and when he decided he might want to, too.

In the end, she gets four blue circles on the knuckles of her right hand-"Like Orwell," she says. Jason gets the date of the day he woke up on that bus to the Grand Canyon tattooed on the back of his neck in Roman numerals. It stings more than he thought it would, but Piper's smile is blinding.

"Neck tattoos are hot," she tells him, and he grins back.

* * *

On the way back to camp, he finally asks her, figuring he probably should since he just got a tattoo himself. "What made you want one?"

Her forehead crinkles. "At first, I just wanted the memory of the war. As a-I don't know, a kind of scar, I guess. Something that said I made it through but also remembered everyone who didn't. And then it just felt so permanent, like I was telling everybody who saw me, and I wanted more of that." She touches the bandages over her knuckles. "And now-you know how you used to pass notes in class?"

Jason nods, even though he never did that. He knows what she means.

"It's like I'm passing notes, except the notes are me." She pauses to reflect. "That's what it is. It's me, just more obvious."

Jason feels the lingering sensation of the needle on his neck, and yeah, that's exactly what it is.


End file.
